Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Best of GABF 2019
Let's face it, my 16-year-old self would have thought this Great American Beer Festival was made when I stumbled onto two beers within 10 yards of each that both were named Deez Nuts.
But my present 46-year-old self felt that the country's largest gathering of brewers found its true essence in those side trips to an unknown destination that produced surprise after surprise, every one enlightening about the current state of the craft-beer industry. And even if the GABF didn't sell out for the first time in 13 years, there were no complaints from people wandering the floor that American beer makers don't continue to get more daring even as they get more approachable.
With that said, here is the annual look at one beer writer's impressions of the most unique and satisfying malt beverages in the nation - not a one of which was a hard seltzer.
Best Beer of the Festival: Oozlefinch Craft Brewery Sour, Not Stirred
It took guts to make a martini gose. But it took even more talent to make it so perfectly, crafting a beer that was tart and sweet with hints of booze but with pronounced tastes as well of Angelica root, orange peel and just enough bitters to convince yourself you were holding some sort of magical hybrid. During a year when so many beers walked a line between pleasing and challenging, this treat from Virginia was all joy, even as it made you think about just what it was you were imbibing.
Other Best Envelope Pusher: Speciation Artisan Ales Saltation
The most interesting brewery in America - and, yes, this Michigan fermentation king has earned that title - managed to turn heads again with a margarita that produced flavors of lime, saltiness and sweetness in perfect harmony. Owner Mitch Ermatinger offered that this had an almost familiar property to people for something so outside the box. It was comforting even as it woke taste buds.
Best Hop Bomb: Great Notion Brewing Chuck's Notion
You had to look hard for this New England-style IPA - specifically at Finn's Manor before the festival began - but finding it meant diving nose-first into a rich, tropical array of fruit that defines the new IPA and yet keeps it squarely in check with a 7% ABV level.
Best Dark Offering: Weldwerks PBC
In a hall fall of wonderfully boozy barrel-aged stouts, what stood out about Weldwerks' 16% ABV peanut butter cup stout was it was so rich in chocolate and nuts that the alcohol was like a background element. The lines at the Greeley brewery's booth were absurd but somehow worth it.
Best Dad Beer: Cannonball Creek Netflix and Pils
Approachable was in this year, but nothing was as easy and yet as flavorful as this ultra-crispy pilsner from Golden, which laid out its hops as its main flavor attribute but let them present themselves in dry and smooth offering that stuck around your palate like it was something much bigger.
Best Undefinable Beer: Captain Lawrence Brewing Powder Dreams
This beer from upstate New York is listed as a New England IPA. But hints of guava and vanilla and lactose popped in your mouth, leaving you torn between calling it a sour or a milkshake or … never mind. It was just a creative, highly flavorful offering.
Best Beer That Seemed Nothing Like a Beer: J Wakefield Brewing Haterade
Haterade isn't for everyone; it absolutely looked like Hawaiian Punch and tasted like a tart Kool Aid presented on a bed of malt to even it out. But finding a beer like this from this Miami brewery reminds you of why boundaries exist to be pushed, and you couldn't help but go back for more.
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Best Beer/Food Combination: West Sixth Brewing
If you've never bought a ticket to the Paired beer and food event at GABF, here is what you miss: A Kentucky brewery you might not have known about offering a full but drinkable 13% ABV Snakes in Barrel bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stout in concert with spicy kangaroo sausage from Pope Joan restaurant of Melbourne, Australia. Fantastic alone, they were magical together. And it made you want to try more pairings on your own.
Biggest Surprise of GABF: 105 West Brewing Double Deez Nuts
No, really. I drank it to send a picture of the name to a friend. And I stopped in my tracks, realizing the generous hazelnut overtones in this wee heavy made this a beer that backed up its adjunct ingredients with a solid body that let malt and nuts stand out simultaneously. A true find from Castle Rock.
Let's face it, my 16-year-old self would have thought this Great American Beer Festival was made when I stumbled onto two beers within 10 yards of each that both were named Deez Nuts.
But my present 46-year-old self felt that the country's largest gathering of brewers found its true essence in those side trips to an unknown destination that produced surprise after surprise, every one enlightening about the current state of the craft-beer industry. And even if the GABF didn't sell out for the first time in 13 years, there were no complaints from people wandering the floor that American beer makers don't continue to get more daring even as they get more approachable.
With that said, here is the annual look at one beer writer's impressions of the most unique and satisfying malt beverages in the nation - not a one of which was a hard seltzer.
It took guts to make a martini gose. But it took even more talent to make it so perfectly, crafting a beer that was tart and sweet with hints of booze but with pronounced tastes as well of Angelica root, orange peel and just enough bitters to convince yourself you were holding some sort of magical hybrid. During a year when so many beers walked a line between pleasing and challenging, this treat from Virginia was all joy, even as it made you think about just what it was you were imbibing.
Other Best Envelope Pusher: Speciation Artisan Ales Saltation
The most interesting brewery in America - and, yes, this Michigan fermentation king has earned that title - managed to turn heads again with a margarita that produced flavors of lime, saltiness and sweetness in perfect harmony. Owner Mitch Ermatinger offered that this had an almost familiar property to people for something so outside the box. It was comforting even as it woke taste buds.
Best Hop Bomb: Great Notion Brewing Chuck's Notion
You had to look hard for this New England-style IPA - specifically at Finn's Manor before the festival began - but finding it meant diving nose-first into a rich, tropical array of fruit that defines the new IPA and yet keeps it squarely in check with a 7% ABV level.Best Dark Offering: Weldwerks PBC
In a hall fall of wonderfully boozy barrel-aged stouts, what stood out about Weldwerks' 16% ABV peanut butter cup stout was it was so rich in chocolate and nuts that the alcohol was like a background element. The lines at the Greeley brewery's booth were absurd but somehow worth it.
Best Dad Beer: Cannonball Creek Netflix and Pils
Approachable was in this year, but nothing was as easy and yet as flavorful as this ultra-crispy pilsner from Golden, which laid out its hops as its main flavor attribute but let them present themselves in dry and smooth offering that stuck around your palate like it was something much bigger.
Best Undefinable Beer: Captain Lawrence Brewing Powder Dreams
This beer from upstate New York is listed as a New England IPA. But hints of guava and vanilla and lactose popped in your mouth, leaving you torn between calling it a sour or a milkshake or … never mind. It was just a creative, highly flavorful offering.
Best Beer That Seemed Nothing Like a Beer: J Wakefield Brewing Haterade
Haterade isn't for everyone; it absolutely looked like Hawaiian Punch and tasted like a tart Kool Aid presented on a bed of malt to even it out. But finding a beer like this from this Miami brewery reminds you of why boundaries exist to be pushed, and you couldn't help but go back for more.
\
Best Beer/Food Combination: West Sixth Brewing
If you've never bought a ticket to the Paired beer and food event at GABF, here is what you miss: A Kentucky brewery you might not have known about offering a full but drinkable 13% ABV Snakes in Barrel bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stout in concert with spicy kangaroo sausage from Pope Joan restaurant of Melbourne, Australia. Fantastic alone, they were magical together. And it made you want to try more pairings on your own.
Biggest Surprise of GABF: 105 West Brewing Double Deez Nuts
No, really. I drank it to send a picture of the name to a friend. And I stopped in my tracks, realizing the generous hazelnut overtones in this wee heavy made this a beer that backed up its adjunct ingredients with a solid body that let malt and nuts stand out simultaneously. A true find from Castle Rock.
Labels: 105 West Brewing, Cannonball Creek Brewing, Great American Beer Festival, Great Notion Brewing, J Wakefield Brewing, Oozlefinch Craft Brewery, Speciation Artisan Ales, Weldwerks Brewing
Tuesday, October 01, 2019
Denver's Beer Restaurant Scene is Going Through an Evolution
Denver has its breweries and it has its beer bars, as the world knows while it descends upon the Great American Beer Festival this week. But an under-appreciated part of the scene the Mile High City is developing is its beer-themed restaurants - and few represent it as well as Former Saint.
Former Saint Craft Kitchen and Taps is located on the first floor of the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center, not exactly a place where you might think beer culture might flourish. But the restaurant - named not for its latent soul but for its being the site of St. Mary's Academy, the first all-girls school in Colorado - was developed over a number of years with the theme of Colorado being front and center the entire time.
That's evident in the menu, heavy on state-produced meats and vegetables, from its bison burger to its buffalo steak. And it's evident in the 16-tap, all-Colorado beer list, which Dane Fiscella, the hotel's assistant food and beverage manager, works closely with his beverage guru to for the largely conventioneers' crowd that stays there.
Here you will find a range from local lagers to Epic Brewing's Big Bad Baptist Imperial Stout. More importantly, you will find beers ranging from those produced by the state's largest craft brewer, New Belgium Brewing, to only-distributed-in-Denver artisans like Goldspot Brewing.
Fiscella, a veteran of the venerable Philadelphia beer scene, goes out on scouting trips often for local beers, and he thinks not of what will appeal to the masses but what will genuinely provoke customers' interests. The biggest seller the space has seen is not a light lager but Station 26 Brewing Juicy Banger, which Coloradans know as one of the best IPAs made in the Centennial State.
And when the beer isn't flowing through the copper pipes from the glass-walled taproom (pictured above) that draw so many questions, it is taking a supporting role on the menu. The restaurant's popular quail and waffles (pictured below) is slathered with a syrup made from Denver Beer Co's Graham Cracker Porter.
Certainly, there are places around downtown Denver that serve a larger and riskier portfolio of Colorado craft beers than Former Saint. But the eatery - which is hosting a Sierra Nevada pairing dinner on Wednesday and a number of tap takeovers throughout this week - is a prime example of how the Denver beer scene is starting to imbue itself in places well beyond the beer-geek haunts of yore, and it is well worth a stop on the way into or out of the Colorado Convention Center to see how craft beer and fine food have become allies rather than opposites , even in a corporate hotel setting.
"Our Colorado themed hyper-focus, it sets us apart from our competitors," Fiscella said recently. "When you're staying at a hotel, you're going on a trip. "If we can give you that sense in downtown Denver of adventure and of out-of-the-ordinary, that's what we want to do."
Denver has its breweries and it has its beer bars, as the world knows while it descends upon the Great American Beer Festival this week. But an under-appreciated part of the scene the Mile High City is developing is its beer-themed restaurants - and few represent it as well as Former Saint.
Former Saint Craft Kitchen and Taps is located on the first floor of the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center, not exactly a place where you might think beer culture might flourish. But the restaurant - named not for its latent soul but for its being the site of St. Mary's Academy, the first all-girls school in Colorado - was developed over a number of years with the theme of Colorado being front and center the entire time.
That's evident in the menu, heavy on state-produced meats and vegetables, from its bison burger to its buffalo steak. And it's evident in the 16-tap, all-Colorado beer list, which Dane Fiscella, the hotel's assistant food and beverage manager, works closely with his beverage guru to for the largely conventioneers' crowd that stays there.
Here you will find a range from local lagers to Epic Brewing's Big Bad Baptist Imperial Stout. More importantly, you will find beers ranging from those produced by the state's largest craft brewer, New Belgium Brewing, to only-distributed-in-Denver artisans like Goldspot Brewing.
Fiscella, a veteran of the venerable Philadelphia beer scene, goes out on scouting trips often for local beers, and he thinks not of what will appeal to the masses but what will genuinely provoke customers' interests. The biggest seller the space has seen is not a light lager but Station 26 Brewing Juicy Banger, which Coloradans know as one of the best IPAs made in the Centennial State.
And when the beer isn't flowing through the copper pipes from the glass-walled taproom (pictured above) that draw so many questions, it is taking a supporting role on the menu. The restaurant's popular quail and waffles (pictured below) is slathered with a syrup made from Denver Beer Co's Graham Cracker Porter.
Certainly, there are places around downtown Denver that serve a larger and riskier portfolio of Colorado craft beers than Former Saint. But the eatery - which is hosting a Sierra Nevada pairing dinner on Wednesday and a number of tap takeovers throughout this week - is a prime example of how the Denver beer scene is starting to imbue itself in places well beyond the beer-geek haunts of yore, and it is well worth a stop on the way into or out of the Colorado Convention Center to see how craft beer and fine food have become allies rather than opposites , even in a corporate hotel setting.
"Our Colorado themed hyper-focus, it sets us apart from our competitors," Fiscella said recently. "When you're staying at a hotel, you're going on a trip. "If we can give you that sense in downtown Denver of adventure and of out-of-the-ordinary, that's what we want to do."
Labels: Denver Beer Co, Epic Brewing, Food pairing, Former Saint Craft Kitchen and Taps, Goldspot Brewing, Great American Beer Festival, Sierra Nevada Brewing, Station 26 Brewing
